


Remembering

by voices_of_salt



Series: The Riera Cycle [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9458462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_of_salt/pseuds/voices_of_salt
Summary: Prompt: flashback.Mercedes stands alone in the great catacombs of the Rieras and tries to find her brother in bones laid out on a stone slab.





	

  
 

 

>  “I am made of memories.” ― Madeline Miller, _The Song of Achilles_

 

 

 

_“Oh, Arnau." She reached out to him, and his bones were cold.  
_

 

The heat was a molten weight pressing down on them, heavy with the scent of meadow grass.

Mercedes shifted, feeling a rock digging into her hip through the scratchy woollen blanket. Arnau mistook her intent and made a noise of disapproval; not opening his eyes, he pulled her closer.

Her brother’s skin was slick with sweat, warmed by the noonday sun above them. Laying her head on his bare chest, she heard the thump of his heart, and felt the soft, sympathetic tug of their connection – always stronger when they touched.

No wind stirred the grass, no breeze shifted her hair as it lay soaked and plastered to her back.

“We’re not in the shade anymore,” Mercedes sighed, squinting up at the branches of the tree in whose shadow they’d lain the blanket many hours ago.

“Don’t care,” Arnau said sleepily.

“We’ll die of heatstroke.”

“Mmhmmm.”

Mercedes raised herself up on her elbows, looking down at his sun-browned face. A bead of sweat had formed on his upper lip, and she bent to kiss it off, tasting salt. Arnau smiled under her lips, and stretched like a contented cat. He slipped his thigh between hers as he did so, and Mercedes’ heart began to beat faster.

“It’s too hot,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“No,” he said, grinning as only a man who knows he’d won an argument before it started can, “it isn’t.”

 

* * *

 

 

_They’d lain him out on his stone bed. She put her hand atop his, and the bones shifted under her touch._

 

A small, sticky hand slipped into her own. Before her conscious mind even assessed the situation, her soul recognised him. Four years old, Mercedes looked down at Arnau. Her little brother beamed up at her from under an untidy mop of curls. He put his free hand into his sash and pulled out the squashed remains of a half-eaten honey cake, which he pressed into her hand.

“For you!” he said proudly.

The older children snickered.

Mercedes glared round at them.

“So, are you going to eat that?” asked Diego Torrens.

“Shut up, Diego.”

“Are you going to eat it?” Echoed Arnau, looking a little crestfallen.

Mercedes raised her chin, stared Diego in the eyes, and ate the cake with all the appearance of relish.

“It’s very good Arnua,” she enthused. “Thank you so much!”

Arnau beamed even wider, if possible, squeezing her hand. “I stole it from the kitchen!” Mercedes felt the distant glow of his happiness, hovering just beyond her own feelings of intermingled love and exasperation.

“Would you steal me some, little brother?” asked Aina, looking smug and superior.

“You shut up too, Aina,” Mercedes said, glaring daggers at her big sister.

“Make me, baby.”

“I’m not a baby!”

“I’m not a baby either,” Arnau added helpfully.

Mercedes slipped her hand from Arnua’s and squared up to Aina. “Take it back.”

“Take what back, baby?”

Mercedes lunged at Aina, all flailing hands and four-year-old fury.

 

Later, when she sat in the road, defeated and humiliated, Arnau took her injured hand in both his own. Solemnly, he raised it to his lips, kissing the scraped knuckles. Then, that grave duty accomplished, he squirmed into her lap, putting his arms around her neck.

“You fight really good,” he said.

Mercedes sighed, holding him tight.The warm, familiar weight of him in her arms seemed to banish all her aches and pains and wounded pride.

“Thanks, my little hurricane.”

 

* * *

 

_The skull grinned up at her. She tried to see something of him there: some trace of the man she’d loved._

 

The pre-dawn light filtered in through the grimy windows, soft and grey. Mercedes opened her eyes, looking up at the smoke-darkened ceiling of the inn’s room. Turning her head, she saw Arnau’s head on the pillow beside her.

It was nothing new, their sharing a bed. They’d shared a bed since Arnau was old enough to clamber from his crib to crawl into her room. The ache in her heart as she watched him sleep was a familiar friend as well. It was a fragile wonder to her to see him so still and quiet when he could hardly sit still while awake. And, with the ache, came a familiar sense of dread: her flesh crawled to think of the shame, should her secret be discovered.

The happiness, though – that was new.

They’d been lovers for almost a month now, but the time had passed like a dream. All the misery of fighting this irresistible force that drove them together had gone. All the misdirected anguish and rage that had driven them to lash out at each other was gone, too. Now, they were Mercedes and Arnau again. Mercedes and Arnau: perhaps not as the gods had intended, but as the fates had made them.

Arnau stirred, yawned, and opened his eyes, looking up at her.

“Good morning, Arnau Riera de Domonova i Riera de Lleida, my soul’s twin, heart’s delight, and bringer of many fine orgasms. You have drool on your chin.”

He laughed and pulled her down for a kiss. His open mouth tasted like morning breath, but so did hers, and really she couldn’t have cared less. Mercedes could kiss him like this forever. And, when they kissed, it felt like forever – the promised eternity for the devotees of some profoundly benevolent deity who’d given their fortunate followers an infinity of soft curls, brown skin, warm lips, and skilled hands.

At last she pulled back, breathless and dizzied by the touch of him.

“Mercedes Riera, love of my life and captain of my heart: your breath tastes like bilge.”

“I happen to know for a fact that when you were a baby, mother went to the bruixes for a spell to make your breath less awful.”

“There really are some downsides to sleeping with your sister, I find.”

Mercedes’ smile slipped, but Arnau sat up and took her head gently in his hands, looking intently into her eyes.

“None of that. We know our troubles each by name, as grandmother would say. But if you start fretting about whether this is somehow your fault because you’re the big sister, and if you ‘infected’ me through our bond, or something equally idiotic, I will put my clothes on and it will serve you right.”

Mercedes let out a laugh that was still half a sob.

He kissed her.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

 

  
_Blinking through her tears, she crawled onto the stone bed beside him. She pulled his kerchief around her shoulders, burying her face in the soft red wool, though she’d long since worn any of his scent from it. But she had memories. She had a sea of memories, and she was drowning._


End file.
